Happy 5th Anniversary!
by TheLeaneHunter9
Summary: Just a short personal experience with this game.


**_A/N:_** _I originally had a fanfic planned, but I'm lazy. Anyway, enjoy! :P_

Ayyy! Time for a story.

I remember first seeing commercials for Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale around the summer of 2012.

My reaction was basically the same everyone else had- "Sony Smash Bros.". I didn't know what characters were going to be included in the game, though I did recognize Nathan Drake, Sackboy, Kratos, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank and Fat Princess in the ads I saw, but there were some glaring problems. No Crash Bandicoot? No Spyro? No Lara Croft or Solid Snake? Damn. I would have even settled for Buzz! or one of the Chimera from Resistance.

I dismissed it, and the game faded away later in the year. But then, the following year, I came across some fanart of a familiar looking game on DeviantArt, mostly from Memoski. I then stumbled upon IGN Beyond Podcasts discussing several characters to be in the game, and I thought it was hilarious. How did this game evade my attention?

The gameplay system was unlike anything I'd ever seen in MK, SF or even SSB, and I loved the idea. There were a lot of possibilities, so I set my sights on this game.

I searched high and low for the next few months looking for this game, but no copy ever turned up, until my birthday. I used to invite my friends over for some shits and giggles, but this year I needed a game to keep that going.

Low and behold, I happened to spy the game hiding on one of the bottom shelves at Gamestop, and for 20 Euro no less! I bought the game along with some credit, bought the DLC characters and tried to find the character I was best at using before anyone else arrived.

I liked Heihachi because he controlled most similarly to a fighting game character, but I ended up going with Kat. I had played Gravity Rush recently enough at the time, and I really liked Kat's character, so I didn't have any reason not to choose her.

I played the arcade modes of several of the characters, Heihachi and Kat, or course, then Nathan Drake, because...it's Nathan Drake. I played as Sackboy as well, primarily due to nostalgia.

I also discovered one character I had no idea even existed. Who the hell was Sir Daniel Fortesque? I didn't know. I thought he was just a skeleton that you might have fought in God of War or something, but I let my curiousity get the best of me and I tried him out.

I didn't settle for him, but he was such a loveable character! I immediately found out what game he was from and downloaded MediEvil off the PS Store, and loved it. Not exactly Zelda, but it had its own identity and Sir Daniel was loveable as ever.

But it wasn't until my friends arrived that the game really shone through as a multiplayer game. They were somewhat apprehensive as well, but after about two games, we were all hooked.

There were about fifty matches that consisted of utter chaos, including Kat floating above the stage trying to land Gravity Kicks, Colonel Radec spamming his Down Square, Sly Cooper spamming the invisibility and alarm clock combo and Toro Inoue with that cheap ass Side Triangle Shinobi Toro move, of which the majority was won by Sly Cooper. I had no idea how.

We also tried out the other characters too, and that was when I realized why the game was so much fun.

Sure, it was obviously rushed. I read up later on about the likes of Dart Feld, Abe, Jin Kazama and Ryu Hayabusa who were supposed to be in the game, the lackluster menus and lack of additional content also proved that.

But even then, Superbot put a lot of love into the game. I was able to quickly get over the missing characters like Spyro and Crash, because, even with only 24 characters, it felt like a crossover game. More so than Smash. Sure, Smash is great fun, I absolutely love it, and the wide range of appeal is extremely impressive, but there's just something.

Maybe it's how the characters interact with each other during the clever rival scenes, maybe it's the creative stage design, which is the one thing I will say is by far better in PSAS than in any Smash game, combining two games into any given stage, or maybe it's just the sheer amount of effort Superbot put in. Every character was handled with care, and they play completely differently. Even Good Cole and Evil Cole have some fundamental differences!

But whatever it is, it lead me to fanfiction, where I've had the pleasure of seeing other people's unique takes on the game, and so I figured that even though it was somewhat late, I would throw my hat into the ring. The rest, as they say, is history.

So I just wrote this real quick to say, here's to holding out for a much deserved sequel, no matter how long it takes!

Happy 5th Anniversary, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale!


End file.
